Two killed and several injured in Israeli strike on Gaza's only Catholic church
The Catholic charity Caritas Jerusalem said the parish's 60-year-old caretaker and an 84-year-old woman receiving psycho-social support inside a Caritas tent in the church compound were killed in the attack.
The Israeli military said it is aware of the incident and is investigating.
Parish priest Fr Gabriel Romanelli, who was close to the late Pope Francis, was also injured.
The church compound was sheltering both Christians and Muslims, including a number of children with disabilities, according to Fadel Naem, acting director of Al-Ahli Hospital, which received the dead and people injured.
The Israeli military said it 'makes every feasible effort to mitigate harm to civilians and civilian structures, including religious sites, and regrets any damage caused to them'.
Israel accuses Hamas militants of operating from civilians areas.
In a rare move, the Israeli Foreign Ministry posted an apology on social media.
'Israel expresses deep sorrow over the damage to the Holy Family Church in Gaza City and over any civilian casualty,' the ministry said.
Italian premier Giorgia Meloni blamed Israel for the strike on the church.
'The attacks on the civilian population that Israel has been demonstrating for months are unacceptable. No military action can justify such an attitude,' she said.
The church is just a stone's throw from Al-Ahli Hospital, Mr Naem said, noting that the area around both the church and the hospital has been repeatedly struck for over a week.
The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which also has a church in Gaza that previously sustained damage from Israeli strikes, said the Holy Family Church was sheltering 600 displaced people, including many children, and 54 people with disabilities.
It said the building suffered significant damage.
Targeting a holy site 'is a blatant affront to human dignity and a grave violation of the sanctity of life and the inviolability of religious sites, which are meant to serve as safe havens during times of war,' the Church said in a statement.
Separately, another person was killed and 17 injured Thursday in a strike against two schools sheltering displaced people in the Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, according to Al-Awda Hospital.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike.
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The Independent
8 minutes ago
- The Independent
Israel orders evacuations in central Gaza as ceasefire talks stall and military offensive widens
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The Herald Scotland
3 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Israel's dangerous expansionism is now the clear and present danger
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Writing recently in the Financial Times (FT), the Saudi author and commentator Ali Shihabi described Israel's current pursuit of more territory as one 'cloaked in the language of security and religious entitlement'. By 'entitlement' Shihabi is, of course, referring to the biblical idea of a 'Greater Israel' that many of the religious zealots and right-wingers that comprise prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu's coalition government envisage in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and beyond. Whether Netanyahu himself is fully aligned with his cabinet over ambitions for a 'Greater Israel' remains open to conjecture, but what's in no doubt is that Israel is now pushing back its borders like never before. In Gaza this past week, reports of an intensification in the demolition of buildings underscores what many observers see as Israel's long-term plan to move the Palestinian population out and fully control Gaza's post-war space. In the occupied West Bank, meanwhile, Israel's illegal settlement expansion and annexing of territory goes on apace. Further afield, the past week also saw Israel doubling down militarily on both Syria and Lebanon. In Syria, Israel continues to take territorial advantage of the country's political fragility in the wake of the overthrow of Bashar al- Assad's regime. (Image: The Washington Post via Getty Images) FAR BEYOND THE LINE FOR months, the Israeli military have been assimilating the Druze residents of the Golan Heights, venturing territorially far beyond the line where their predecessors stopped during the conquest of this mountainous plateau Israel has occupied since 1967. Since the ousting of Assad last December, Israel has struck Syria hundreds of times, and invaded and occupied about 155 square miles of its territory. Last Wednesday, Israel launched air strikes on Syria's capital, Damascus. 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Only a few months ago, Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich declared that Israel would not stop fighting until Syria was partitioned and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had been expelled from Gaza into third countries. 'With God's help and the valour of your comrades-in-arms who continue to fight even now, we will end this campaign when Syria is dismantled, Hezbollah is severely beaten, Iran is stripped of its nuclear threat, Gaza is cleansed of Hamas and hundreds of thousands of Gazans are on their way out of it to other countries,' Smotrich declared during a pre-Memorial Day speech in the West the country? DIVIDE THE COUNTRY ACCORDING to the Times of [[Israel]], Smotrich's comment about dividing Syria came just days after a US Republican congressman Marlin Stutzman told the newspaper that al-Sharaa had expressed 'openness' to normalising relations with Jerusalem and cautioned against efforts to divide the country. 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Israeli officials confirmed that 'due to the ongoing instability' they had agreed to allow Syrian forces limited access to the Sweida area over the next few days. But even with this ceasefire in place the situation remains incredibly volatile, and al-Sharaa could now in effect be forced to either cede ambitions to reassert state control over southern Syria, undermining his attempts to unify the country, or risk an even greater confrontation with Israel. Israel's laying down of territorial markers in Syria is just the latest example of what some analysts says is a policy of pushing a dangerous expansionism in the region. With the Israeli air force bombing Beirut and the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, as well as the Syrian capital Damascus from which its infantry troops are now stationed a mere 40 minutes away, never has Israel engaged in such prolonged conflict on so many battlefronts. All this, too, before taking into consideration its recent onslaught on targets across Iran. With every day that passes Netanyahu, it seems, raises the stakes even further while increasingly disregarding the occasional overtures from Washington to rein in Israel's military actions as was the case in Syria last week. Read more Tears and trauma: David Pratt in Ukraine DAVID PRATT ON THE WORLD: Whatever happens in Brazil's resentful and rancorous election, the result will have major repercussions for us all David Pratt in Ukraine: It's hard to comprehend this level of destruction David Pratt: Kremlin's protestations have a hollow ring as atrocities mount up EXPANSION STRATEGY TO get a fuller picture of the scale and intensity of Israel's expansionist strategy at the moment it's worth considering recent mapping compiled by the independent non-profit think tank the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). According to a recent analysis of its data, it shows that between October 7, 2023 – the date of the Hamas attack on Israel – and just before Israel attacked Iran on June 13, Israel has carried out nearly 35,000 recorded attacks across five countries: the occupied Palestinian territory, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and attacks include air and drone strikes, shelling and missile attacks, remote explosives, and property destruction. The majority of attacks have been on Palestinian territory with at least 18,235 recorded incidents, followed by Lebanon (15,520), Syria (616), Iran (58) and Yemen (39). 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According to an analysis by the British research group Forensic Architecture, Israel has used building demolitions, armoured bulldozers, and air strikes to establish a permanent military presence in areas such as Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarem refugee camps. Satellite imagery shows widespread destruction, with entire neighbourhoods flattened and roads reconfigured to facilitate troop movements and surveillance. The United Nations estimates that these operations have displaced at least 40,000 Palestinians. As Israel's expansionist strategy intensifies, many regional observers say it is simply fuelling chaos and stoking up a future widening regional conflict. Martin Gak is an Argentinian Jewish journalist based in Germany who is of the view that Israel's territorial ambitions are 'much bigger than the theological design of greater Israel'. In a recent interview, Gak drew parallels with the way Israel is now operating in the Middle East using tactics similar to those of Russia. He said: 'If you look at Gaza, if you look at what happened in southern Lebanon, the images should be very reminiscent of Grozny in the second Chechen war… so I think that what we're seeing is a Russian playbook of complete destruction,' Gak told Turkish media. ISRAEL'S GAIN? OTHER regional observers like the Saudi commentator Shihabi recently posed the question in the FT as to what does Israel truly gain from this relentless push to expand its borders? 'The cost is staggering: deepening international isolation, increasing threats to the global Jewish community, psychological trauma within a constantly targeted Israeli society, and the further destabilisation of an already volatile region,' Shihabi concluded. Like other Middle East watchers, Shihabi is firmly of the view that more territory is not the answer to Israel's security problems and that 'the future is being held hostage by zealots who value conquest over co-existence'. While it might have been initially framed as an 'incursion' to eradicate Hamas and rescue the nearly 250 hostages seized on October 7, Israel's Gaza 'operation' has since moved into an entirely new and much wider military realm. It's one, too, for which it has been given virtual carte blanche by the US and Western countries to prosecute. Until that stops, Israel's dangerous expansionist ambitions will almost certainly continue to fuel an escalation in conflict across the Middle East. The days of framing such a military strategy as being driven by 'existential need' have gone. Israel, as many rightfully argue, is the real regional threat now.
Spectator
3 hours ago
- Spectator
The painful truth about Christian anti-Semitism
When I walked past a group of shouting protestors holding placards announcing, 'Christians for Palestine,' I couldn't resist: 'If Christians hadn't treated Jews so appallingly for so many centuries there wouldn't have been a need for Israel,' I said politely. 'Do you genuinely think that one-sided polemics are appropriate,' I asked There was a pause for self-righteous reflection, before one of the group responded: 'Typical! A Zionist playing the antisemitic card.' The truth is that this Anglican priest with three Jewish grandparents wasn't playing any card at all. I was trying to point out some of the inconsistencies and denial inherent in Christian opposition to Israel, which increasingly goes far beyond criticism of the situation in Gaza. Israel may now be close to 50 per cent Mizrahi (Jews from the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia) but its foundation was overwhelmingly Ashkenazi and European. In other words, Jews who had lived in Christendom. Some were ideological Zionists but most were fleeing horrendous persecution. Even with the former, it's impossible to fully separate a philosophical Zionism from the context of pogrom, expulsion, blood libel, and slaughter. A slaughter that was often at its most manic during Easter. Early in its history, the church had removed the Jewish Jesus from the Christian narrative – the Jew as Christ became the Jew as Christ-killer. St. John Chrysostom in the 4th-century is arguably the most infamous of the church fathers in this regard but he's far from unique. He championed the concept of Jewish deicide, described synagogues as pagan temples and worse than brothels, and compared Jews to demons. His supporters argue that this was part of a conflict between two rival groups and not antisemitism as we know it, but reality cries out to be heard. Even if that argument were true, and it's an impossible stretch, the man's writings such as Adversus Judaeos – Against the Jews – did much to shape subsequent attitudes and prejudice. There were hopes that the Reformation would improve the situation, and to an extent it did. But as early as 1537, Martin Luther worked to have the Jews expelled from Saxony and six years later, he published The Jews and Their Lies, in which he called for Jewish schools, homes, and synagogues to be destroyed. The Jews, he said, were, 'base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth.' For those who dismiss this as mere history, Martin Sasse, the Bishop of the Evangelical Church of Thuringia, supported Kristallnacht in 1938 and distributed a pamphlet entitled Martin Luther on the Jews: Away with Them! By the 19th-century there was a belief among some in the Jewish world that Christian antisemitism was on the decline. The more assimilated the Jews were, they assumed, the more they would be accepted. Theodor Herzl, raised in a secular, German-speaking family in Austria-Hungary, shared this optimism as a young man. It didn't last. He witnessed the horrendous treatment of French army officer Alfred Dreyfus, with the French Catholic church playing a leading role. It was clear to Herzl that patriotism, loyalty, and integration were insufficient, and only a Jewish state could guarantee dignity and protection. His portrait now hangs in the Speaker's chamber of the Israel parliament, where he's honoured as the founder of modern Zionism. Less than forty years after Herzl's death came the Holocaust. Nazism was philosophically pagan and anti-Christian but its anti-Jewish racism was accepted, or ignored, in much of occupied Christian Europe. Righteous Gentiles are remembered not because they were so numerous but so few. There were of course courageous Christians who defended their Jewish fellow citizens but one of the open wounds of modern Christian history is how little was done. A climate of the outsider, the lesser, the God murderer had been created over a thousand years, one that varied in intensity but was seldom completely absent. Much has changed since then, with the development of Christian Zionism (not always helpful) and a post-Holocaust theology that emphasises the Jewish nature of Jesus, his family and followers (always helpful). But along with this is replacement theology, a belief that the church has superseded the Jews as God's chosen. It has worrying implications and has gained popularity among anti-Zionists. As for Jesus being a Palestinian, this is just fashionable propaganda. The word Palestine had been used by the Greeks but Jesus was a Judean, a Jew, and the crucifixion and resurrection took place in Judea. It was the Romans in the 2nd century who changed the region's name to Syria Palaestina following a Jewish revolt and the expulsion of the Jews from their homeland. The medieval world continued the attempt to expunge Jesus' Jewishness and some modern leftists have followed suit in the name of what they regard as justice and anti-colonialism. Christians need to come to terms with their own history and filter criticism of the Jewish state through a sense of informed ownership and responsibility – and never accuse someone of 'playing the antisemitism card.' It's just not the Christian thing to do.
